<B>Arts Funding in the UK</B><P>The BBC has a page devoted to links to thier UK arts funding articles. It really is a mine of information.<P><A HREF="http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/in_depth/entertainment/2001/arts_funding/" TARGET=_blank><B>click for more</B></A><BR>

I'm with you Sugar Plum!<P>The good news is that Gerry Robinson, the Chairman of The Arts Council has persuaded the Government to give more money to the Arts, starting next year. it's still much less than most of our European neighbours, but much more than central Govt. funding of the Arts in the US.

We have been promised "an avalanche of creativity". Those were the words of the culture secretary, Tessa Jowell, back in July when, in the wake of the government's three-yearly spending review, she announced that an extra £75m would be spent on the arts by 2005-6. Now it is crunch time: the precise allocation of those funds between the new Creative Partnerships scheme - which aims to form links between schools and arts organisations - and the performing arts is expected to be announced this week. Time for arts supremos to sit back, relax and let the good times roll. After all, out of the last spending review, in 2000, came the biggest-ever increase in the arts budget: an extra £100m. Untold riches - or so you might think.

I agree that it is an interesting article and provides a good overview of the funding systems in four countries. The sub-heading "Is it time to scrap Government funding altogether and privatise the whole show?" is misleading as this is not on the writer's agenda.

The Thatcherite dream that corporate sponsorship could plug a hole in arts funding has proved short-lived. Several former major players - Abbey National, BT, IBM and NatWest for example - have effectively pulled out of the arts altogether, and the RSC, Scottish Opera, the Halle and CBSO are only four of many institutions which have lost out badly in consequence.

Research by the consultancy Arts & Business shows that in the last financial year corporate sponsorship dropped from £150m to £114m - and all this year's dips and dives should send that figure crashing a further 20-30 per cent. Put brutally, business is getting fed up with the arts.

There's not enough grovelling or payback, and grand opera or Britart doesn't bring either the exposure or the coverage that big sporting events afford.

There is a bad old joke that the only culture in Belfast can be found at the bottom of a yoghurt pot. Given the damage done by the Troubles and chronic underfunding of the arts, once it was not altogether untrue.

But last night some of the province's most famous names appeared to be saying enough was enough. The actors Stephen Rea and Adrian Dunbar have joined the playwright Brian Friel and critic Tom Paulin in an attack on Belfast city council for slashing its grants by more than a fifth.

Artists picketed the council's Arts Awards last night to highlight what they felt was official hypocrisy in celebrating their achievements while cutting their budgets. A letter signed by 250, a who's who of the Northern Irish scene, hammered home the message, and 14 of the nominees boycotted the gala.

A multi-millionaire South African retail magnate has given £20m jointly to the Royal Opera House and Cardiff's Wales Millennium Centre in one of the largest ever cash donations to the arts in Britain.

Donald Gordon, chairman of Liberty International, which owns the Lakeside shopping centre in Essex and Gateshead's MetroCentre, is to hand £10m to each of the two performing arts venues over the next five years

A shower of gold has fallen on the Royal Opera in Covent Garden and the Wales Millennium Centre. Over the next five years, they will get £10m each to create new productions, in one of the largest private gifts ever to the performing arts.

Lloyd Webber calls for West End tax breaks by Jeremy Austin for The Stage

Andrew Lloyd Webber is calling on the government to introduce tax breaks for new West End drama producers in an attempt to make it easier for commercial producers to compete with those in the subsidised sector.

Speaking to The Stage, life peer Lloyd Webber said he intends to "beat the drum a wee bit" in the House of Lords to try to influence government in coming to the aid of the commercial sector by introducing film industry-style breaks.

You may not believe it, but I take no delight in having been right about the appeal of opera (see our article New Life for Opera of 18th April). The news that, just weeks after opening, the Savoy Opera experiment has failed can please no one except the most rabid anti-opera freaks. Stephen Waley-Cohen and Raymond Gubbay are no fools: obviously they have costed the whole scheme thoroughly and set up the accounts in such a way that they have been able to recognise the signs and so have decided - probably very wisely - not to throw more money at a venture which they clearly now feel has no chance of success.

This was a brave experiment as an alternative/addition to state funding of the arts. Sadly it looks as though it is failing, but who knows the additional coverage might help get people to try it.

On an "every cloud" basis, it does indicate that Arts Council England and the other funding bodies have not got it completely wrong in backing the state funding as a crucial part of our Arts infrastructure.

Frayling warns government over backwards step in arts funding by Jeremy Austin for The Stage

Unless the government provides Arts Council England with a real term increase in funding, plus a further £20 million, clients face a return to the stop/start funding policies of the nineties, chairman Christopher Frayling has warned.

Speaking in the week that the Treasury prepares to announce departmental budgets for the next three years, Frayling warned that the effects of any underfunding will begin to hit the sector as Parliament prepares for the General Election. For the government, added Frayling, this "would not be a good time for the arts community to get angry".

SOLT calls for West End film-style tax breaks By Ruth Gillespie for The Stage

Speaking at a function hosted by Conservative Party leader Michael Howard, Waley-Cohen called on the current government or any potential administration to consider extending concessions to the theatre industry.

Tories say theatre subsidy is not the answer By Ruth Gillespie for The Stage

Public funding has failed to provide a sustainable future for theatre according to shadow arts minister Boris Johnson, who has claimed that providing tax incentives for private investment is the only way to ensure growth.

Johnson told delegates attending an Arts Council England seminar during the Conservative Party Conference in Bournemouth that there was a need to generate more private investment through American-style tax breaks allowing 100% of money donated to be claimed back in tax relief.

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